In 1930 when my great-grandfather was 17 years old he came by himself from Germany to America, first to the port in New York and the eventually settled in New Jersey. He left Germany because of the harsh economic conditions and lack of work, searching for opportunities and betterment in America, but never forgetting his parents and classic German aesthetics. Once he had established a life for himself and married a woman he met here, he purchased a hand-carved wooden cuckoo clock to remind him of his own parents and former life. My grandmother has told me about her childhood and how her father loved his German roots, and I have my own childhood memories of seeing the cuckoo clock hung up in the den in my grandparent's house, as she used it as her own reminder and tie to him. Even when the gears stopped working and the pine-cone counterweights no longer moved, the clock remained on the wall. It was only recently, once my grandmother moved in with my mother, that the clock came down and was carefully packed away and moved to storage, but that is because my mother already has a chiming clock hung in the living room, one that's been there since I was a child. 

– Jenna Castillo

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more